Free Fire (17 page)

Joe entered the office, Demming behind him. A dark-haired, dark-eyed woman sat at a reception desk reading a glossy magazine.She looked as out of place as a nail salon in a cow pasture and she raised a face filled with undisguised suspicion.

“Is Clay McCann in?” Joe asked.

“Who are you?” she asked in a hard-edged East Coast accent.

“I’m Joe, this is Judy.”

“What do you want?”

“To see Clay McCann.”

“Sorry, he’s not in at the moment and you don’t have an appointment,” she said, running a lacquered nail down a calendar on her desk. Joe noted there were no appointments at all written on it.

“When will he be back?”

“He’s off making a call at the supermarket,” she said, apparentlyunaware how odd that sounded. “That takes him hours sometimes. So, Punch and Judy, if you want to meet with him you can schedule an
appointment
.”

“You’re his secretary?”

She performed what amounted to a dry spit take. “Secretary?Hardly. I’m Sheila D’Amato and I’m stuck in this one-horsetown. I’m filling in because his real secretary quit.”

Joe and Demming looked at each other. Joe didn’t want to wait, neither did Demming.

“We’ll be back,” Joe said, handing Sheila his card, as did Demming. He used the opportunity to steal a look through an open door behind Sheila into what was undoubtedly McCann’s office. One entire wall was filled with Montana statute books. There was a messy desk stacked high with unopened mail. On a credenza behind McCann’s desk were binders emblazoned with corporate names and logos: Allied, Genetech, BioCorp, Schroeder Engineering, EnerDyne. The names rang no bells, but the collection of them struck the same discordant note as Sheila.

“A game warden and a park ranger,” Sheila said, curling her lip with distaste. “Punch and Judy. I bet I know what you want to talk to him about.”

Outside, Joe paused on the sidewalk to scribble the company names into a notebook he withdrew from his pocket. While he did, Demming said, “Let’s go, Punch.”

“Why would he be making a call at the supermarket?” Demming asked as they cleared West Yellowstone. “I assume he’s using a pay phone. Why not just call from his office?”

“Probably thinks his lines are tapped,” Joe said. “Or he doesn’t want Sheila D’Amato to know what he’s up to.”

“What
is
he up to?”

10

To get to bechler ranger station, they drove south toward Ashton, Idaho, skirting the western boundary of the park, which loomed darkly to the east and was constantly in sight. The terrain opened up into plowed fields, and they caught a glimpse of the Tetons on the horizon before turning back toward Yellowstone. The Bechler area was dense and heavily wooded. Stray shafts of sunlight filtered through the tree branches to the pine needle floor. Deadfall littered the ground. There was no traffic on the road. Joe pulled into the ranger station and parked facing an old-fashioned hitching post.

The station had the feel of a frontier outpost, very much unlikethe government buildings at Mammoth. There were five rough log structures built on short stilts, including a barn with horses in the corral, a long bunkhouse with a porch, and a small visitor center the size of a large outhouse. At the western corner of the complex was a trailhead for a narrow rocky path that meanderedinto the forest. No one was about, but a generator hummed in one of the buildings.

They clomped up the wooden stairway and entered the station,surprising a young seasonal ranger behind the counter.

“Wow,” the man said, “I didn’t see you pull in.”

Joe smiled. “It gets lonely here, huh?”

The ranger, whose name tag said B. Stevens, nodded. “You’re the first people here today. It gets real slow this late in the season.”

B. Stevens hadn’t shaved for a couple of days and hadn’t combed his hair that morning. He was the polar opposite of the spit-shined James Langston Joe had met that morning.

Demming took over, telling Stevens they were following up on the murders, that Joe was with the State of Wyoming and she was providing assistance. While they talked, Joe flipped through the guest register, going back to July 21.

“Stevens was working that morning,” Demming told Joe. “He was here when Clay McCann checked in.”

“I was here when he came back too,” Stevens said with unmistakablepride. “He put his guns right here on this counter and told me what he’d done. That’s when I called for backup.”

Joe nodded, asked Stevens to recall the morning. Stevens told the story without embellishment, replicating the chain of events Joe had studied in the incident reports.

“When he checked in before going on his hike,” Joe asked, “did you see any weapons on him?”

Stevens said he didn’t, McCann must have left them in his car. What struck him, though, was how McCann was dressed, “like he’d just taken all of his clothes out of the packages. Most of the people we see down here are hard-core hikers or fishermen.They don’t look so . . . neat.”

“He didn’t seem nervous or jumpy?”

“No. He just seemed . . . uncomfortable. Like he was out of his element, which he was, I guess.”

“Can you remember how much time he spent signing in? Did he do it quickly, or did it take a few minutes?”

Stevens scratched his head. “I just can’t recall. No one’s asked me that before. He didn’t make that much of an impressionon me. The first time he was in here, I mean. When he came back with those guns, that’s what I remember.”

“Can I get a copy of this page he signed in on?”

Stevens shot a look at Demming, said, “We don’t have a copy machine here. We’ve been requesting one for years, but headquarters won’t give us one.”

“Bureaucracy,” Demming mumbled.

Joe asked if he could borrow the register and send it back, and the ranger agreed.

“We can’t even get a phone line,” Stevens said. “In order to call out we use radios or cell phones that get a signal about an hour a day, if that.”

Joe said, “Does this entrance have a camera set up at the borderlike the others?”

Stevens laughed. “We have a camera,” he said, “but it hasn’t worked for a few years. We’ve requested a repairman, but . . .”

“We were thinking of hiking to the crime scene,” Joe said. “Is it straight down that trail out there?”

“We were?” Demming asked, slightly alarmed.

Stevens nodded. “There’s a fork in the trail right off, but it’s well marked.” The ranger hesitated. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Yup.”

Stevens looked at Demming, then back at Joe. “Be damned careful. This area has become pretty well known with all of the publicity. They call it the Zone of Death once you cross the line into Idaho. Lots more people show up here than they used to. Some of them get as far as the border but chicken out and come back giggling. But others are just plain scary-looking. The Zone draws them, I guess. They want to be in a place with no law. It’s not my idea of a good time, but we can’t stop them from walkinginto it if they’ve paid their fee and signed in. Personally, I think we ought to close the trail until the situation is resolved, or everybody just forgets about what happened.”

Demming asked, “Are there people in there now?”

Stevens shrugged. “It’s hard to say. More folks have signed in than have come out. Of course, the stragglers could have gone on from here, or come back after we’re closed. But you never know. Our rangers are a little reluctant to patrol in there now, if you know what I mean. They’re afraid of getting am-bushedby somebody who thinks they can’t ever be prosecuted for it.”

“You’re right,” Demming said. “We should close the trail.”

“We’ll be okay in a few weeks,” Stevens said, “when the snow comes. We’ve had twelve feet by Halloween in the past. That’ll give us the winter to make our case.”

Joe thanked Stevens and left with Demming. “Why did you take the register?” Demming asked.

Joe showed her the page with Clay McCann’s name on it. Above his name were signatures from the day before for R. Hoening, J. McCaleb, C. Williams, and C. Wade. They listed their destination as “Nirvana.”

Joe said, “If he wanted to make sure they were here, all he had to do was read the register.”

As they stood near the Yukon they both looked at the trailhead,as if it were calling to them.

“I don’t know, Joe . . .” Demming said cautiously.

“I want to see the crime scene,” Joe said. “It’ll help me get my bearings. You can wait for me here if you want.”

She thought about it for a few seconds, looking from Joe to the trailhead and back before saying, “I’m going with you.”

The sign at the fork in the trail indicated it was thirty miles to Old Faithful to the right, two miles to Robinson Lake on the left. The trail on the right fork was more heavily traveled. They went left.

The forest closed in around them. Because there was no plan or program to clear brush in the park, the floor of the timber on both sides of the trail was thick and tangled with rotting deadfall.Joe was struck by how “un-Yellowstone-like” this part of the park was. There were no geysers or thermal areas, and they’d seen no wildlife. Only thick, lush vegetation and old-growthtrees. He studied the surface of the trail as he hiked, looking for fresh tracks either in or out, and stopped at a mud hole to study a wide Vibram-soled footprint.

“Someone’s been in here recently,” he said.

“Great,” Demming whispered.

There was no delineation sign or post to indicate where they crossed the Idaho border. Joe assumed they had because the line, according to his map, was less than two hundred yards from the ranger station and they’d gone much farther than that. The trail meandered at a slight decline, but it was easy walking.

He heard it before he saw it.

“Boundary Creek,” Joe whispered. They were now in the Zone of Death.

Joe felt his senses heighten as they crossed the creek, which was wider and more impressive than he’d guessed from looking at the map. He hopped from rock to rock, spooking brook trout that sunned in calm pools, their forms shooting across the sandy bottom like dark sparks. On the other side, as they pushed fartherinto the trees, he tried to will his ears to hear better and his eyes to sharpen. His body tingled, and he felt, for the first time in months, back in his element.

Robinson lake was rimmed with swamp except for the far side where trees formed a northern stand. The trail skirted the lake on the right and curled around it to the trees where, Joe guessed, the campers had set up their tents and been murdered. As they walked, he tried to put himself into Clay McCann’s head. How far away did he see their tents? Where did he encounterHoening? Did he smell their campfire, hear them talkingbefore he got there?

As they approached the stand of trees and an elevated, grassy flat that had to be where the camp was located, Joe heard Demming unsnap her holster behind him. She was as jumpy as he was.

The camp had been cleared months before but the fire ring revealed the center of it. Logs had been dragged from the timberto sit on around the fire. Tiny pieces of plasticized foil in the grass indicated where a camper—or Clay McCann—had opened a package of snacks.

In the campsite, Joe turned and surveyed the trail they had taken. From the camper’s perspective, they must have seen McCanncoming. There was no way he snuck up on them unless they were distracted or oblivious, which was possible. Since Williams had been found near the fire ring and McCaleb and Wade had been killed coming out of their tent, he assumed McCannwas literally in the camp before he started shooting. So was Hoening, whose body was found on the trail, the first or last to die? Again it struck him that the sequence of events really didn’t matter. There was no doubt who’d done it.

“Joe . . .” Demming whispered.

She was staring into the timber, her face ashen, her hand on her gun. Joe followed her line of sight.

The man aiming his rifle at them was dressed in filthy camouflage fatigues and had been hiding behind a tree. At fifty feet, it was unlikely he would miss if he pulled the trigger.

“That’s right,” the man said to Demming, “pull that gun out slow and toss it over to the side.”

She did as told.

Because his back was to the lake, Joe figured the man with the rifle hadn’t seen the Glock in his belt. Not that it would help them right now, since in order to use it he’d need to pull it, rack the slide, and hit what he was aiming at. In the time that would take, the rifleman could empty his weapon into the both of them.

“I seen you coming half a mile away,” the man said, stepping out from behind the tree but keeping the rifle leveled. “I was in the trees taking a shit when you showed up.”

He was short, stout, mid-thirties, with a blocky head, wide nose flattened to his face, dirt on his hands. His eyes sparkled with menace. Behind him, in the shadows of the timber, Joe now saw a crude lean-to shelter, a skinned and half-dismembereddeer hanging from a cross-pole lashed to tree trunks. A survivalist, living off the land in a place with no law.

“You need to lower the weapon,” Demming said, her voice calmer than Joe thought his would be at that moment. “Let’s talk this over before you get yourself into any more trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?” he said. “There ain’t nothing you can do to me here.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” Demming said.

“Sure it does,” he said, and showed a tight smile. He was missing teeth on both top and bottom. “It worked for Clay McCann.”

Joe and Demming exchanged a quick glance.

“I wrote him a letter but he never answered,” the man said. Joe tried to determine the man’s accent. His words were flat and hard. Midwestern, Joe guessed.

“Where you from?” Joe asked. “Nebraska?”

“Iowa.”

“You’re a long way from home.”

The Iowan looked hard at Joe for the first time and narrowed his eyes. “This is my home. And you two are trespassing. And the way I got it figured, I could shoot you both right now and walk ’cause no court can try me.”